SHENZHEN Medical Ethics Committee started a probe yesterday after a scientist from a Shenzhen university claimed he had succeeded in helping create the world’s first genetically edited babies, which caused a great disturbance worldwide.

The committee will verify the report on the ethical review of the research and make the result public in a timely manner, its supervisor, Shenzhen’s health authorities, said on its official microblog yesterday.

The authorities said they had not received an ethical assessment application for the study, which is a prerequisite for such experiments.

Dr. He Jiankui, a former teacher of the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), claimed that twin girls were born earlier this month after he edited their embryos using CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) technology to remove the CCR5 gene, which plays a critical role in enabling many forms of the HIV virus to infect cells.

He revealed the accomplishment in Hong Kong, one day ahead of an international conference on gene editing to be held from today to Thursday.

The twins, girls named Lulu and Nana, were born a few weeks ago after an in vitro fertilization procedure, said He. He discussed the birth in a video posted on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, yesterday.

“The mother started her pregnancy by regular IVF with one difference: Right after we sent her husband’s sperm into her eggs, we also sent in a little bit of protein and instructions for a gene surgery,” he said. “Lulu and Nana were just a single cell when the surgery removed the doorway through which HIV infects people.”

He could not be reached for comment yesterday, but his research has sparked controversy among academics and the public over concerns of medical ethics, effectiveness.

SUSTech also issued a statement yesterday, saying the school is not aware of He’s study because the study was conducted outside the campus, and He’s research has transgressed ethics and morality. He has quit his job at the university, it said.

A report by the Associated Press yesterday said He sought and received approval for his project from Shenzhen Harmonicare Women’s and Children’s Hospital, and an approval document from the hospital started circulating online yesterday. However, the hospital denied any knowledge of the matter in a statement to the media yesterday afternoon, according to jiemian.com.

Gene-editing also raises moral and ethical problems. Some scientists condemn such an “experiment on human beings,” while others, including one famed geneticist, Harvard University’s George Church, defended the attempt to use gene editing to prevent HIV, calling it “justifiable.”

A total of 122 Chinese scientists signed their names to a joint statement yesterday condemning the research, saying the experiment was “crazy” and “dangerous.”

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said he was astounded to hear the birth of twins with edited genes.

“Genetic editing technology is far from mature and should not be used on humans,” he said. “It is improper to do such research on humans.”

Right now, some researchers are trying to use genetic editing technology to treat people infected with HIV so the virus will not duplicate and transmit to others, he said.(SD News)

“But the research is still confined to labs,” he said. “Animal experiments should be done to assess both gains and risks for the subjects, before the possibility of application on humans.”(SD-Agencies)